In its first 10 pages, Maajid Nawaz’s memoir Radical takes readers from the British seaside town of Southend, where he grew up in the mid-1990s, a hip-hop b-boy and Public Enemy fan, to the prison in Egypt where he spent four years after Sept. 11, to a garden lunch, in Dallas, where he discussed waterboarding with then-U.S. President George W. Bush.

Nawaz, 34, once involved in the hardline Islamist group Hizb al-Tahrir, has emerged in recent years as a leader of the counter-extremism movement. He established the London-based Quilliam Foundation, arguing the world needs a new narrative — not more wars — to combat Al Qaeda’s ideology. Below is an edited email conversation with the Star’s National Security reporter Michelle Shephard.

Q: Why write the book and why now? What are you hoping people will take away from your experience?

A: I wasn’t ready to write Radical just yet. However, the timing of the Arab uprisings forced me to take the plunge. I hope that people see through reading Radical that the real conversations we need, as globalized citizens in a new age, are not conversations about Islam versus Christianity, nor indeed around any religious theme; but around multiple identities, democratic culture and transnational values. Our real struggle is not between Islam and “the rest” but between democratic culture and undemocratic culture. Undemocratic culture pervades all societies. This struggle is often shrouded in pseudoreligious garb, but underneath all the pious rhetoric and righteous indignation is a lust for power, a search for identity and a flawed response to modernity.

Q: If you could choose just one issue or point of debate that frustrates you most when talking about counterterrorism or anti-extremist measures, what would it be?

A: What frustrates me the most is that there is not much difference between the traditional right and left wings in approaching the issue of Muslims and extremism in the West. Their approach essentially hails from the same colonial intellectual baggage. Many on the right will forever view Muslims as “outsiders” with an “alien culture.” Many on the left also perceive Muslims as “outsiders.” For this group, Muslims are essentially a communal bloc in need of pandering to and being catered for, in which the individual must be subjected to intra-community cultural hierarchies rather than any established liberal standards. Whereas the former group defines Muslims as illiberal outsiders to be feared, the latter defines Muslims as illiberal outsiders whose “lack of liberalism” should be encouraged in the name of a patronizing search for “authenticity.” Where the new and innovative is a highly prized commodity for the rest of society, pandering to the intellectual fossilization among some self-established Muslim “community leaders” is perceived as somehow more “real.” (Neither) of these two approaches treats Western Muslims as citizens, who are subject to the same standards and expectations as the rest of society. Both approaches reek of a colonial “poverty of expectation.”

Q: How important do you think racism was in pushing you toward Hizb al-Tahrir — say when compared with other influences, such as your brother or influential Islamists.

A: The violent racism I experienced growing up was crucial in easing the transition of detaching myself from my own society. However racism, or any other such grievance, does not stand alone as a factor. Many people experience violent racism and other such trauma, but not all go on to join extremist organizations. Such trauma can indeed facilitate an identity crisis but without charismatic recruiters and an ideological narrative, the process remains incomplete.

Q: You warn about the possibility of history repeating itself and the rise of the English Defence League?

A: Indeed, I have often said that right-wing and Islamist extremism have a symbiotic relationship, mutually reinforcing each other’s narratives and providing each other with a reason to exist. Whereas violent racism played such an important role in creating conditions that were ripe for my own extremist journey (as well as many other disillusioned young Muslims in the West), violent Islamism is in turn creating the same conditions among disenchanted white working-class youth. The rise of the EDL and other such movements in Britain is an example of this. The EDL was born in direct response to Islamist protests in Britain. Hence, the vicious cycle of racism, Islamism and more racism that I refer to in my book.

Q: Part of your critique is how Islamism is misunderstood. As it became popular, you wrote, “The default left-leaning liberal position was to embrace the movement as part of multicultural sensitivity.” Do you think that is still the case and, if so, why is that dangerous?

A: This is indeed still the case. Many have not really been able to distinguish between Islam and Islamism. Islamism is not Islam. Islam is a faith. Islamism is a modern political ideology that aspires to enforce any given interpretation of Islam over society by law. Islam started roughly 1,400 years ago. By contrast, the first Islamist group was founded in 1928 in Egypt. The specific theopolitical ambition to codify and enshrine the Muslim moral code — sharia — as law using the power of the state was inspired by post-World War I European fascism. In this sense, Islamism is entirely modern and Western-inspired, while Islam is ancient. Many in the West have misunderstood this key distinction and, in an effort to be respectful to an ancient religion, have inadvertently adopted the Islamist project believing they are somehow giving a “political” voice to Muslims.

All they ended up doing was erecting highly organized communalists within Muslims communities who claimed to speak on behalf of all Muslims and represent their interests in the “West,” as if Muslims were an outside tribe, requiring a chieftain-like structure. One only need look at Muslim-majority countries and the state they’re in to realize there is no such thing as the official “Muslim” view on anything. Like Christianity, Islam is a religion that does not and, in fact cannot, define one’s detailed political leanings. The consequence of supporting this form of communalism within Muslim communities only served to further alienate, further isolate, intellectually ghettoize and hinder progress of Muslims in the West, all with the best of “colonial” intentions — a poverty of expectation.

Q: It is difficult to comprehend the idea of becoming a suicide bomber or killing civilians in the name of a cause. But in your Egyptian cell you contemplated this. What would you tell someone in a similar mental state now?

A: I think that if someone is already in that mental state not much can be done about it immediately. First and foremost their heart needs to soften through lived experience — in my case this happened through Amnesty International adopting me as a prisoner of conscience. After this it becomes much easier to start deconstructing the years of constructed ignorance built up in this person’s mind. If I had to speak to someone in this state, I would seize the opportunity to build a bond first and then try to inject a seed of doubt as an emergency measure. To become a suicide bomber requires absolute certainty in one’s own righteousness, and by planting that seed of doubt we may be able to save many lives, including the bomber’s own.

Q: I found how you changed your views while incarcerated fascinating as rarely do we hear of deradicalization in prison. But you came full circle. As you wrote, it didn’t happen overnight but it was a former HT member who really affected you when he said he had left the group simply because, “I grew up.” Can it really be that simple?

A: It’s not that simple and my transition took five years in total (four inside prison and one outside prison) and caused much heartache. The book really needs to be read to understand what happened.

Q: Women and their influence on you is a theme in the book from your liberal mother to you former wife, who seemed unable to abandon HT as you had. Where are they now and what role do they play?

A: I am heavily influenced by the values my mother fought to keep alive in me even during the darkest of times. I have in fact reverted back to how she raised me, as an open-minded, inquisitive, skeptical and questioning liberal. My mother’s influence has resulted in me valuing the role and contribution women make in society in a way that I never did before. But, as you quite rightly point out, women are not by default better champions for liberal thought than men. Many are also be supporters of Islamist organizations. In short, women are 50 per cent of society, and for that reason alone no project, Islamist or liberal, can afford to ignore its women.